Wikipedia talk:Your alma mater is not your ticket to Wikipedia

Outdated and incorrect

This advice is outdated and incorrect. WP:N explicitly "does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article." Similarly, WP:LISTBIO explicitly says that "[i]nclusion in lists contained within articles should be determined by WP:SOURCELIST, in that the entries must have the same importance to the subject as would be required for the entry to be included in the text of the article according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines (including Wikipedia:Trivia sections)."

This advice needs to be updated or deleted. ElKevbo (talk) 19:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

​​​ I am pinging editors who made substantive edits to this advice article and appear to still be active; feel free to ignore this if you're not interested in this topic! I'll also drop a note at WT:N, WT:UNI, and WT:EDUCATION. ElKevbo (talk) 19:39, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

• On the contrary, while you might not yourself like the essay, upon reading it (I hadn't encountered it before) it is not outdated at all, and its advice is simple and sound. WP:N is nowhere cited in the article, and LISTBIO notwithstanding, "Notable {alumni, residents, etc}" entries are routinely deleted Wikipedia-wide if they don't link to valid articles. It takes a very problematic essay indeed to be subject to deletion, and you haven't come close to making a case for this one to be so objectionable as to warrant it. Ravenswing 21:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I won't engage with you until you assume some good faith. ElKevbo (talk) 21:30, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

If you equate "good faith" with agreeing with you, you might have a long wait there. I don't presume you're acting out of poor faith here. I believe you're exercising poor judgment. Ravenswing 00:19, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

• This is still good advice. Practically speaking, individuals listed as "notable alumni" should be, at minimum, sufficiently notable that they're appropriate to have an article about. Reliable sources tell us whether someone is notable—they either extensively note them, or they, well, don't. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:21, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

The spirit of the advice is still useful but the multiple statements that "people in these (embedded) lists must be independently notable" is blatantly incorrect. It's very unlikely that we are going to (a) modify WP:N so that it does determine the content of articles and (b) modify WP:LISTBIO so that inclusion in lists contained within articles required that the contents be independently notable.

Beginning this article with "Wikipedia has strict policies about the notability of people" sets the wrong tone and immediately confuses list articles and embedded lists which have different guidelines. In fact, the failure to distinguish between list articles and embedded lists is probably the central problem. And it's one that can be solved. ElKevbo (talk) 21:30, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

If you think it needs editing for tone, well then, by all means do that. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Done. I fully expect someone who disagrees with WP:LISTBIO and WP:N to revert my edits... ElKevbo (talk) 01:18, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Err ... have you read LISTBIO? Not only does it cite this essay, but it goes on to state explicitly that "A person is typically included in a list of people only if all the following requirements are met: The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement [and] The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources." Ravenswing 00:19, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I have. I don't think that you have because (a) the text you've quoted literally doesn't appear anywhere in WP:LISTBIO and (b) WP:N is only required for inclusion in stand-alone lists, not embedded lists. Please re-read what I wrote when I opened this discussion, what WP:N says about how it (does not) govern article content, and what WP:LISTBIO says about embedded lists (here, I'll help: "Inclusion in lists contained within articles should be determined by WP:SOURCELIST, in that the entries must have the same importance to the subject as would be required for the entry to be included in the text of the article according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines (including Wikipedia:Trivia sections).").

It would really be helpful if you stopped assuming that I'm stupid and actually conversed like a well-intentioned colleague. If you can't do those things then please stop participating in this discussion. ElKevbo (talk) 01:08, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

• I think realistically, this might be a conversation better had at Wikipedia:Write the article first which is probably the more well-known essay, and gets more than 10x the traffic. I think of this essay as really just a footnote to that. MarginalCost (talk) 21:36, 17 May 2021 (UTC)